Last Words
by Soccus
Summary: Six months after the Hunger games, and Rue has a message for Primrose Everdeen. Part 2 of a series. Oneshot. Warnings for mentions of previous character death.


AN: This is part two of a series of four oneshots. Go read the first one (available from my profile) before this or you might be very confused. :)

Warnings: Mentions of previous character death.

Just a tiny note on one matter: As with Katniss, the organisers decided that the victory tour should start with district one and end with district 11 (12 being visited before 11), in the interest of fluid travel.

* * *

The victory tour was a strange event for Rue.

It is strange, seeing faces of people she'd briefly known and, in very few cases, indirectly caused to die.

Not that pictures of the fallen tributes have put up of course. The Capitol never does anything so _blatantly _disrespectful of the dead. Well not during the Victory tour anyway.

It is in the faces of the dead tributes' families that she sees them. Bits of them anyway. Glimmer's beauty, Cato's strength, Foxface's wiliness-

And then Rue doesn't want to remember anything anymore.

Can you feel guilty about people that died because you lived?

Rue thinks so, but she is also the only Victor never to have killed anyone, never to have had to take someone else's life to survive.

At least the Victory tour will be over soon and she won't have to be involved with the Games for a while.

There is one more stop to go before her final destination though.

So many people have asked, "_What did Katniss Everdeen say in her last moments? What did she say to __**you**__?" _As if it applied to them. As if her dead friend's words had been addressed to herself.

No. She has one final stop to deliver a message passed on from a dead girl walking.

When she stands in front of the crowd, a slightly different, better fed, taller version of herself than presented in the games, there are no cheers for the victor of the 74th annual Hunger Games. The crowd just stares up at the little girl who had unseated their would-be victor. The _true _victor of the Games.

The one who escaped a lifetime of the Capitol's machinations.

Rue herself ignores the speeches and introductions. All she can focus on is the two people standing on the far side of the square, staring right back at her.

Once upon a time Primrose Everdeen did not look like her sister. She was well cared for, as well as could be, and did not know the weight of responsibility like her elder did. She had starved, yes, and suffered, but it had not been her own responsibility to care for her family. That had been first her parents' then her mother's and then her sister's duty. Never Prim's.

However the six months since the Games have changed her, her body becoming more angular, thinner, her face ageing, becoming unhappier, even distrusting.

Rue can see Katniss in the grief-stricken face across from her.

The Capitol had once compared them, Rue and Prim, both little sisters, blood or no blood relation, to the late Katniss Everdeen. They have explained, or at least tried to, away Katniss's final actions with that comparison.

Rue has grown though. Prim has hardened.

They aren't little sisters anymore.

Here though, standing across from one another, the closest they'd come to one another in their entire lives, they shut the world out. Rue is a winged messenger from the heavens. Prim is to be the recipient of something she desperately needs, something the world desperately needs.

_Why did she sacrifice herself for you? Why did she abandon her little sister for __**you**__?Why, why, why?_

They will receive no answers today.

And after all why wouldn't you die to save your little sister?

When Rue opens her mouth to speak once the officials have quietened, Primrose Everdeen knows that the next words were for her and for her only. The Capitol, the Districts, Gale, her mother, they can all listen in like they understand what was being said, even though they never will.

This is a matter between sisters.

These are Katniss Everdeen's final words to her little sister Primrose Everdeen.

_"I'm sorry Prim."_

* * *

AN: And that was that.

If anyone spots any inconsistencies with the tenses please tell me (they were my big problem on this one). If anything else is wrong or worth complaining (or even just writing about) please review. :)

Eli


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